Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed | Page 9

when a burgher who did not possess ��100--a simple farmer and a kind of "slim" speculator--received by Volksraad vote the contract for building a certain railway.[3] The price included a very large margin to be distributed in places of interest--as douceurs of ��1,000 to ��5,000 each, and ��10,000 for the pro forma contractor and his Volksraad confederates; all those sums were paid out by the firm for whom the contract was actually taken up.
Similarly in contracts for road making, repairing, and making streets, etc., etc. On one occasion a rather highly placed official obtained a contract for repairing certain streets in Pretoria for ��60,000. The work being worth ��20,000 at most, the difference went to be shared by the several official participants.
One of the first instances of glaring peculation occurred about fifteen years ago in relation with the Selati railway contract obtained by Baron Oppenheim.[4] The procedure was publicly stigmatized as bribery. It had transpired that nearly all the Volksraad's members had received gifts in cash and values ranging each from ��50 to ��1,000 prior to voting the contract, but what was paid after voting did not become public at the time of exposure.
The acceptance of those gifts was ultimately admitted, in the face of evidence adduced in a certain law case; denial became, in fact, impossible. The plea of exoneration was that those gifts had been freely accepted without pledging the vote. The President publicly exculpated the honourable members, expressing his conviction that none of them could have meant to prejudice the State in their votes for the contract; and as there had been no pledge on their part, the donor had actually incurred the risk of missing his object. From that time the practice of obtaining and selling concessions or of sinecures and other lucrative advantages grew quite into a trade; and receiving douceurs became a hankering passion from highest to lowest, but happily with not a few exceptions where the official's honour was above being priced.
There was nothing shocking in all this venality to the bulk of the Johannesburg speculator class and others of that category. The rest assessed official morality at a depreciated value, but hoped the blemishes might be purged out with other and graver causes for discontent, if Uitlanders, were only granted some effective representation in public matters. That appeared to be the only constitutional remedy. But this continued to be resentfully refused, even in matters which partook of purely domestic interest, such as education, municipal privileges, etc. The latter were opposed upon the specious argument that such extended rights would constitute an _imperium in imperio,_ and thus a condition incompatible with the safety and the conservation of complete control.
In the usual intercourse with burghers and officials a great deal of exasperating and even humiliating experiences had often to be endured, Uitlanders being treated as an inferior class, with scarcely veiled and often with arrogant assumption of superiority.
I witnessed a field cornet enjoying free and courteous hospitality at a Uitlander's house, while being entertained by his host and others in the vernacular Dutch, peremptorily object to the conversation in English in which the lady of the house happened to be engaged with another guest at the further end of the table. His remark was to the effect "that he could not tolerate English being spoken within his hearing"; this was in about 1888.
No wonder that under such conditions and ungenial usage Englishmen and other Uitlanders were put in a resentful mood, and many of them bethought themselves of methods other than constitutional to improve their position.
Identification was resorted to with the Imperial League, a political organization called into being in the Cape Colony to stem Boer assertiveness there and to restrain Bond aspirations. It was also seriously mooted to obtain the good offices of Great Britain as an influence for intervention and remonstrance.
It was not that the Transvaal Government was unaware of its duty and responsibility to remove causes which produced discontent and resentment among by far the larger section of the people under its rule. It seemed rather that the Uitlanders were provoked with systematic intention.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 2: The Berne award has, as is well known, since been given.]
[Footnote 3: The Ermelo-Machadodorp branch.]
[Footnote 4: These very details were since made public in the Belgian Law courts in the recent _cause c��l��bre_ of "The Government of the South African Republic versus Baron Oppenheim."]

MONSTER PETITION--JAMESON INCURSION--ARMAMENTS
It was at this stage in May, 1894, that a monster petition with some 25,000 signatures was presented to the Volksraad, setting forth the entire position, and praying for a commission to be appointed to examine the merits of the Uitlander complaints, and to frame a programme of reforms, the interests of the mining community needing such in a most urgent degree, not only for the sake of its own prosperity,